ART. II.-1. C. G. Carus. Symbolik der menslichen Gestalt. Leipzig, 1853. The Symbolisms of the Human Form. 2. The Physiognomy of the Human Form.

September, 1856.

Quarterly Review,

By

3. On the Human Hand, an Index of Mental Development. Mr. Beamish, F.R.S. (Read at the Meeting of the British Association in Dublin, August 28, 1857.)

AMONG the great reforms which society has long been expect

ing from the State, the education of the people is unquestionably the most important. The philanthropist demands it as the only antidote against crime, and the moralist as the only path to virtue. The Christian, doubtless, desires it with equal sincerity; but he regards it only in its denominational phase; and rather than accept the boon in the only way in which the legislature can grant it, he keeps thousands of his fellow-creatures untaught-living and dying in utter ignorance of those laws, human and divine, by which they are judged here and hereafter. May we not hope for the advent to power of a Christian patriot who will remove this blot upon the Protestantism of England, and this stain upon the sincerity of its faith?

But while we thus claim a measure of secular education from the State, and commit to the churches militant the religious oversight of their illiterate retainers, we must urge upon those whom it specially concerns, the necessity of imparting mental instruction to the middle and upper classes of society. The power to read, write, and count is a doubtful accomplishment if we read only what is fabulous, and write only what is scandal, and count only the pelf which we hoard or misspend. The unlettered peasant who takes his religion upon trust-who performs his social duties by instinct, and counts his gains upon his fingers-is a more valuable unit in the social scale than the educated devourer of fiction, the accomplished retailer of untruths, and the most successful votary of Mammon. To be able to read his Bible is a great step in the civilisation of man; to have read it is one still greater. To have fixed in the memory every sentence of the Decalogue, the varied wisdom of Solomon, and the divine precepts of one greater than Solomon, is a hopeful advance in the Christian life; but great as these acquisitions are, and ample as some may deem them for the humble peasant who lives and toils and dies, they form a poor groundwork in the mental culture of the citizen and the Christian.

Dwelling upon a planet belonging to a great system of worlds, revolving round its axis to give us day and night, and round the sun to give us a change of seasons, it is incumbent upon every Vol. 1.-No. 1.

с

man

man to know something of the wonderful laws by which these arrangements are effected. Enjoying, as we hourly do, the bountiful provision which has been made for our maintenance-the fruits of the earth to nourish us-its flowers to charm us-its life, wild and tame, to toil for us and to feed us-its minerals and its gems, the indispensable elements of civilisation-it is one of our first duties, and ought to be our highest pleasure, to acquire some knowledge of those wonderful creations which are so intimately associated with our daily life. Rejoicing in the light and heat of day, and in the pure ether which we breathe; guided over the ocean and through the desert by the magnetic needle; receiving from afar on the earth's surface, or from beneath the ocean, the electric messages of affection or of business, or trembling under the lightning-bolt and the storm, is it not our highest privilege to investigate and comprehend those various elements and powers which for good or for evil are ever at work around us?

But independently of these obligations to appreciate and extol the works and arrangements of infinite wisdom and goodness, the knowledge thus, acquired is the only ballast for minds distracted by superstitious fears, craving for intelligence from the invisible world, and morbidly yearning for that knowledge of the future which is so rankly supplied by avarice and imposture.

It is among the middle and the upper classes of society, more than among the less instructed, that this credulity and love of the marvellous is most conspicuous. It is rank and luxuriant among the votaries of gaiety and idleness, who are incapable of continuous thought, and who have therefore no faith in those forces in the material world, and in those cosmical laws which are in constant operation around us. Who that is acquainted, even superficially, with the facts and laws of electricity and magnetism can for a moment believe that similar forces emanate from human hands and rush through nonconducting materials, hurling them along the floor, or hoisting them into the air, and imparting to them a knowledge of the past, the unseen, and the future? Who that confides in revealed truth, or possesses the least knowledge of the relations between our mental and physical nature, can allow themselves to believe that impostors, male and female, can summon the dead from their graves, marshal them under the table, and perform, with their physical hands, the paltriest tricks that might be appropriate among the inmates of the nursery or the school

room?

All such beliefs are the necessary results of an imperfect education-the freaks of ill-trained faculties-the cravings of morbid and mystic temperaments that have been suckled on the husks and garbage of literature, and reared on the rank pastures of our mushroom publications. In the past history of our race these

beliefs

Prevalence of Superstitious Beliefs.

19

beliefs have operated fatally on the happiness of man; and no sooner has science exploded one of them than another, equally appalling, starts into its place. A brief history of the most fascinating of these heresies, and a denunciation of the latest, may be of use to various classes of our readers.

In tracing the history of great inventions, where minds of various powers have been engaged, we see how truth has gradually superseded error, how the speculative tendencies of one inquirer are controlled by the stern reason of another, and how great truths are finally established which command the assent of every wellregulated mind.

In the present day, however, when religion and philosophy are assuming such novel aspects-when the mysterious in revelation is subjected to the scrutiny of philosophy, and philosophy herself straying into the labyrinths of mysticism, and claiming kindred with the supernatural-the imagination has usurped the seat of reason, and we are especially called upon to remonstrate against speculations morally and intellectually degrading.

In mediæval times, when positive knowledge had hardly assumed any substantial form, when the little which did exist was confined to particular classes of society, and when education was equally limited and imperfect, minds of activity and power naturally threw themselves into depths which they could not sound, and among quicksands from which they could not escape, and thus sought in wild speculation for the excitement and notoriety which they could not find in patient inquiry.

But in an enlightened age, when real knowledge has made such extraordinary advances, and when the open fields of literature and science invite into their broad domains every variety of genius, and offer a rich harvest of truths to the patient reaper, it is difficult to discover how men, of undoubted character and high attainments, should have surrendered themselves to opinions not less visionary than the legends and prodigies of the ancient mythology. In the early history of knowledge we may find some explanation of the origin and progress of the occult sciences of the necromancy, the magic, the astrology, and the alchemy which so long deluded the world, and, perhaps, some insight into the rise and propagation of similar delusions in our own day.

The earliest achievements of art and science soon became the cherished possessions of priests and kings; and it was doubtless by their agency that barbarous and untractable communities were first brought under the restraints and discipline of law. To the ignorant observer of nature, everything beyond the range of his daily observation is an object of wonder. The phenomena of the material universe, which have no periodical recurrence, assume

C 2

the

the character of supernatural events, and every new process in art, and every combination in science, become valuable agents, at first of government, at last of civilisation. Thus quickly did knowledge become power, not what it now is, a physical agent controlling the elements for the benefit of man, but a moral sceptre wielded over his crouching mind, acting upon its hopes and fears, and subjugating it to the will of a benefactor or a tyrant.

Nor was this sovereignty of a local nature, originating in the ignorance and docility of any particular race, and established by the wisdom and cunning of any individual tyrant. It existed wherever the supremacy of law was acknowledged, and was indeed a spurious theocracy under which the priest and king appeared as the vicegerents of heaven, bearing the credentials of miracles and prodigies which deceived the senses and overawed the judgments of the vulgar.

A system of imposture, thus universal in its reception, and originating in the strongest principles of our nature, was not likely to suffer any abatement, either in its form or character, amid the turbulence of domestic broils, or the desolations of foreign wars. Our passion for the marvellous, indeed, and our reliance on supernatural interference, increase with impending danger, and the agitated mind seeks with a keener relish to penetrate into the future. Hence is the skill of the sorcerer more eagerly invoked, when coming events are casting their shadows before; and whether our curiosity be indulged or disappointed, or our fears rebuked or allayed, our faith in the supernatural acquires new intensity by its exercise. Nor were the evils of such a system abated by the advancement of civilisation and knowledge. Every discovery in science became a new link in the chain which bound the intellectual slave; and in the moral tariff of antiquity, knowledge was the article of contraband, which, though denied to the people, ever found its way into the bonded crypts of the sanctuary. The lights of science were thus placed under a bushel, and skilfully projected from its spectral apertures to dazzle and confound the vulgar.

In this manner did the powers of science and the sanctities of idolatry exercise a long and a fatal sway over the nations of the world; and when Christianity had widely extended itself throughout Europe, and had lost the simplicity and purity of its early days, there sprung up from its holiest mysteries a system of imposture, hostile to the progress of truth, and not less fatal to the spiritual advancement of man, than that which prevailed among heathen nations. Though the instruments of delusion were changed, the system remained the same; truth and fable entered in definite proportions into the legends of the Church; the lying miracles

Astrology and Alchemy.

21

miracles of saints, and the incantations of the necromancer deluded the Christian world for many centuries; and in place of having lost their influence, they have been embalmed amid the civilisation of modern times. Under this system the spiritual element obtained the ascendancy, and powerful and haughty kings laid their willing necks beneath the feet of the Bishop of Rome.

But it is not among ecclesiastics only that this love of the supernatural has uprisen with such fearful luxuriance. The pursuits of laymen have been marked with the same extravagances of pretension, and with even a higher demand upon our faith.

The astrology of former times was the creed of men who were astronomers, and alchemy the creed of chemists; but in both science and imposture were so strangely combined, that Tycho and Kepler practised the one art, and Napier, Boyle, Locke, Newton, and Leibnitz the other. But while we denounce these arts as false in their principles and immoral in their tendencies, we must recollect that they had a better foundation than the delusions of the present day; and it is due to the memory of the great men we have named, to make that apology for their belief in alchemy which is to be found in the discoveries of their successors. When we consider that a gas, a fluid, and a solid may consist of the very same ingredients in different proportions; that the same elements, with one or more atoms of water, form different substances; that a virulent poison may differ from the most wholesome food only in the difference of quantity of the same ingredients; that gold and silver-and, indeed, all the metals may be extracted from transparent crystals, which scarcely differ in their appearance from a piece of common salt; that aluminium, a metal with many of the most valuable properties of gold and silver, can be extracted from clay; that several of the gems can be crystallized from their elements; and that diamond is nothing more than charcoal-we need not wonder that the most extravagant expectations were entertained of procuring from the basest materials the precious metals and the noblest gems. In the daily experiments of the alchemist, his aspirations must often have been encouraged by the startling results at which he arrived. When any of the precious metals were obtained from the ores of lead and other minerals, it was not unreasonable to suppose that they had been formed during the process, and men not disposed to speculate might have been led to embark in new adventures, to procure a more copious supply, without any insult being offered to reason, or any injury inflicted on morality.

Nor were the attempts of the alchemists to obtain an universal medicine altogether irrational and useless. The success of the

Arabian